The AI has been having trouble since the introduction of the new maneuver system.

It's leading by too much. The way the AI is sloppy about accuracy the default and flyby AIs and possibly all AIs except chase naturally shoot ahead of the target because of their circling. They focus too much on circling and do not properly line up their shots.

Last night pm912 discovered that it is unable to account for the difference between rotationAccel and maxRotationRate, and gets worse with more facings.

pm912 and I also believe that the default AI tries to point its nose at its target while trying to fire its weapon ahead of the target.

In addition to the obvious issue with rotationAccel I believe the default and standoff AIs need to drop into the working chase AI temporarily when they're having trouble hitting and the flyby AI needs to just strafe in and out of range, preferably turning so as not to appear to be attempting to ram and not try to circle. The attempts to circle very negatively impact performance with slow firing or counter based fixed axis weapons.

AI assumes max and accel Rotation are the same, and can stop rotating instantly as before in previous versions. A ship will rotate toward its ideal facing towards its target, then after it faces the target, it spins past its desired facing (due to momentum), then the AI compensates like a pendulum. AI ships may wobble while trying to face its target. This is especially noticeable on ships with high max (over 9) and low accel (2 or less).

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Not just Meth Enforcers, but also ships like Repentents and Ares Chasms and Tundras... or any ship with max of 18 and accel of 2 or less.

Speaking of Chasms and Tundras, shouldn't those two have lower max, say 9 instead of 18? They used to spin no faster than the pre-1.3 Sapphire or Wolfen, but now they spin as fast as a Sandstorm or Hornet. They are heavy gunships like the Centurion, which has max of 9.

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I found a bug which caused the AI to ignore rotation acceleration in its calculations. Fixing the bug fixes some of the maneuvering problems with Repentants, etc. [They no longer swing wildly from side to side.]

Found and fixed another AI regression: when aiming at a freighter/capital ship with a large exhaust trail, the AI was treating the trail as part of the ship for purposes of computing its angular size. This made the ship seems bigger than it really was, which made the AI think that it could hit the ship, when in reality it could not.

george moromisato wrote:Found and fixed another AI regression: when aiming at a freighter/capital ship with a large exhaust trail, the AI was treating the trail as part of the ship for purposes of computing its angular size. This made the ship seems bigger than it really was, which made the AI think that it could hit the ship, when in reality it could not.

That explains why the AI fired behind some ships and ahead of others. Now we just need a fix for the latter issue.

george moromisato wrote:Found and fixed another AI regression: when aiming at a freighter/capital ship with a large exhaust trail, the AI was treating the trail as part of the ship for purposes of computing its angular size. This made the ship seems bigger than it really was, which made the AI think that it could hit the ship, when in reality it could not.

That explains why the AI fired behind some ships and ahead of others. Now we just need a fix for the latter issue.

I believe it is the same problem. The code used the incorrect ship size and *centered it* on the ship center. So the ship looked bigger both in front and behind.

I recently observed a very odd battle at the main screen in 1.3 b2. An EI500 was just drifting through space, not turning or thrusting, but it did fire. The enemy, a Molotok, was carefully not aiming at the freighter, such that every single dragonfly shot missed completely, regardless of the range and direction. However, it was firing its MAGs at the freighter using its swivel.